What I wrote last week
Cuisine in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh), Vietnam
Business
‘Batman’ and the Movie Pricing Predicament. A good article on AMC’s move to charge one more dollar to every ticket for the upcoming Batman movie. Yield management by theaters often involves higher ticket prices in the evening or on Fridays and weekends. Charging more for a specific movie is rare. I look forward to seeing how this will benefit or harm the theaters.
Metaverse is all…hype? Google introduced Google Glass years ago. Today, you’ll have the same odds of seeing that Glass on the streets as finding Nokia’s iconic flip phones. I don’t know what these tech visionaries see, but I won’t bet my money on seeing metaverse or whatever the hell it is in the next 10 years.
Moving money internationally. A fantastic read on SWIFT.
Visa, Mastercard Prepare to Raise Credit-Card Fees. Visa and Mastercard are going to charge higher interchange fees to big merchants while lowering the fees for small merchants whose annual revenue is less than $250,000. Visa said merchants could avoid paying more by offering more transaction data and using its tokenization services. I look forward to seeing how this increase will harm consumers as merchants are likely to pass on the higher expense. It’s no wonder why lawmakers want to look into this sort of duopoly enjoyed by Visa and Mastercard. They simply have too much power
The Three Sides of Risk. “You realize that the tail-end consequences – the low-probability, high-impact events – are all that matter. In investing, the average consequences of risk make up most of the daily news headlines. But the tail-end consequences of risk – like pandemics, and depressions – are what make the pages of history books. They’re all that matter. They’re all you should focus on. Once you experience it, you’ll never think otherwise.”
Fraud Is Flourishing on Zelle. The Banks Say It’s Not Their Problem. “Nearly 18 million Americans were defrauded through scams involving digital wallets and person-to-person payment apps in 2020, according to Javelin Strategy & Research, an industry consultant. When swindled customers, already upset to find themselves on the hook, search for other means of redress, many are enraged to find out that Zelle is owned and operated by banks. Banks say they take fraud seriously and are constantly making adjustments to improve security. But police reports and dispatches from industry analysts make it clear that the network has become a preferred tool for grifters like romance scammers, cryptocurrency con artists and those who prowl social media sites advertising concert tickets and purebred puppies — only to disappear with buyers’ cash after they pay.”
Why Commercials Are Coming to the Biggest Streamers. A good piece on streamers weighing on offering ads.
Other stuff I find interesting
Unleash collaboration with new experiences in Google Workspace. The new features look very sweet. If you are a Google Drive/Docs/Workspace user, check this out!
How U.S. Visa Delays Are Taking a Costly Toll on Frustrated Workers. I can tell you from personal experience that these delays add unnecessary stress to immigrants’ life. My colleague’s PERM application in 2019 took 52 days to get adjudicated. Mine is expected to take 6-8 months.
The story of how Swahili became Africa’s most spoken language. “During the decades leading up to the independence of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in the early 1960s, Swahili functioned as an international means of political collaboration. It enabled freedom fighters throughout the region to communicate their common aspirations even though their native languages varied widely. Swahili lacks the numbers of speakers, the wealth, and the political power associated with global languages such as Mandarin, English or Spanish. But Swahili appears to be the only language boasting more than 200 million speakers that has more second-language speakers than native ones.”
The Magic of the Japanese Convenience Store Sandwich
Stats
Hertz had more than 3,300 cars stolen each year
Solar power and batteries account for 60% of planned new U.S. electric generation capacity
US merchants paid more than $55 billion in interchange fees to Visa and Mastercard in 2021
Tap-to-pay penetration in the US as of March 2022 is 20%, according to Visa (from KBW Fintech Payments Conference)
Minh Quang Duong 